


Like a River

by Callisto



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-05
Updated: 2011-04-05
Packaged: 2017-10-17 15:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callisto/pseuds/Callisto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Dude, we should try that.”</i></p><p><i>Sam was busy reading a crease in the map, ears on autopilot.</i></p><p><i>“Yeah? What’s that, then?”</i></p><p><i>“Fishing.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a River

**Author's Note:**

> To Sam's amazement, Dean suggests they go fishing.

_“It was here, while waiting for my brother, that I started this story, although, of course, at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books.” –‘A River Runs Through It’ by Norman Maclean -_

 

“Dude, we should try that.”

Sam was busy reading a crease in the map, ears on autopilot.

“Yeah? What’s that, then?”

“Fishing.”

Sam smoothed the map out some more. “Sure thing, Hemingway. Listen, I’m pretty sure we took a wrong turn before that bridge back there. We should—

“I’m serious.”

Sam blinked, had to backtrack for a second or two. He opened his mouth to fire off another Hemingway quip, but Dean had one eyebrow up and his right shoulder dipped, clearly waiting for Sam to just answer him already.

Sam shut his jaw with an audible click. “You’re... Wow. Really? Fishing? As in...what, poles, bait, freezing our asses off and standing still for hours?”

“Hey, we _sat_ still for eight friggin’ hours yesterday, waiting for that damn poltergeist to show. Least this way we might get something to eat out of it.”

Sam shook his head and went back to the map. Trust this to be food related.

Dean flipped the map out of his hand and gestured vaguely at the admittedly pretty river they were driving alongside.

“’Sides, since you got us lost—

“Hey!”

—and we don’t have anywhere to be right now, I say why not? ’Course, if you’re chicken...” Sam rolled his eyes when Dean jabbed him in the ribs. He looked seconds away from making actual cluck-cluck noises.

“Dude. It’s fishing, not skydiving.”

“Whatever. I will fish the crap out of you, Sammy. You just fuckin’ bring it.”

Only Dean could turn something as boring as fishing into a pissing contest.

“God, you freak, you are on.”

Dean slapped his palm down on Sam’s knee before putting his hand back on the steering wheel. “Atta boy. Loser cooks ’em.”

“Yeah, well. Before either one of us cooks a feast we haven’t caught yet, Hemingway, maybe you could get us to a bait shop first.”

“That it? Don’t you know no other fishermen, Sammy?”

“Dean, would you just bite me and take a left?”

 

Turned out Sam did know another fisherman. His brother. Ed’s Bait Shop kitted them out with the basics, and a kind of Fishing 101 Ed had clearly trotted out for a thousand tourists. Dean shut up and listened for once, because nothing supernatural was being spun as something it wasn’t by an authority figure. Then they were off and running. Well, off and standing at least. Ankle deep, in fact, in rented boots, with a mid-afternoon sun high in the sky and a cooler of beers jammed in the shallow waters between them.

Remembering what Ed had told them, Sam settled his stance, checked his line, and looked a few yards downstream to his right. To where Dean was making an incredible amount of noise and casting out in this weird, jerky rhythm that had definitely not been part of Ed’s advice... Sam listened harder and caught snatches of Iron Maiden lyrics over the sound of water on stone.

Dean was fishing to mullet rock.

“Yo, Sammy! Anything biting you yet?”

Sam squinted across, took his brother in from head to ridiculous toe, suddenly and fiercely loving him like he hadn’t in a long, long time.

He flipped him off, grateful for the distance if the sight of Dean fishing and singing was going to turn him a sentimental sap.

“Only you, you idiot. Now shut the hell up and fish.”

 

Dean caught three, the son of a bitch, cackling and whooping every time he yanked them out of the water. Waggling them at Sam like only an obnoxious big brother could.

“Heh. Want me to come over there and sing to yours, too, Sammy?”

Sam caught one eventually. Did his own bit of whooping and hollering as he waved it in the air at Dean, who whooped and hollered right back, fist in the air.

“Way to go, Sammy!”

Dean splashed his way over to get a better look. He peered around Sam’s shoulder. “Not bad. Not bad at all. Mine are still bigger than yours, though. So get gutting.”

Sam back-handed him.

And reluctantly put his pole aside and got gutting.

“Fine. I hope you realize I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing here, so go be a boy scout and get a fire going.”

Dean built a small fire right next to the water like the pro that he was, and one charcoaled sacrifice aside, they managed to pick enough white flakes off the bones to make their first fish-supper by an honest to god actual river taste pretty damn authentic.

Then Dean disappeared, came back with a packet of marshmallows he claimed he’d bought by accident and left in the car, and Sam thought he might have died and really gone to Boy Scout Heaven. Instead, he learned that beer and hot melted candy really did go with fish.

They trash talked their way through the cooler, slowly fixing the world – Dude, no. The Godzilla remakes suck _ass_ , Sam — and then eventually settled for side-by-side sipping of the last bottle each in silence.

Something occurred to Sam as he sat and watched the sun dip down and their shadows lengthen. He turned to look at his brother, catching him swallow the last of his beer while the embers of their small fire fizzed and popped.

“You never did this before, Dean? I mean uh, with Dad?”

Dean’s head went down for second, but when it came back up, his gaze was warm. “Can you see Dad standing still this long? For anything not evil?”

Sam tossed a small stone into the water at their feet. “Nah, guess not.”

Another moment of quiet. Then Dean leaned into him. “So I guess that makes me naturally gifted, then.”

Sam’s next stone was a little bigger.

“Punk,” said Dean, wiping the splash of water off his chin with the back of his sleeve. “Not my fault I got the cool genes.”

“Asshole genes more like.” But they were both smiling at each other. And Sam kind of knew there and then what Dean had done. Sam had gone an entire afternoon without that melancholy pull in his chest, without his mind drifting to California, to a plate of blood-stained cookies and to what he didn’t have any more. He’d stayed in a here and now that wasn’t a hunt, had _enjoyed_ the here and now. With Dean. And only with Dean. Nothing and no one else to ever taint memories of fishing by a river.

He knew sadness, guilt, and a whole lot of shit he didn’t understand yet had their rightful places in his heart, just as he knew he still loved Jess and missed her terribly. But in all honesty, it was an ache he was tired of feeling sometimes. So he could thank the universe for his big brother, who had reached in and done his thing as only Dean could. He’d made going on without her feel a little less like a crime, and a little more like a life he could get into again.

Sam stood and stretched, popping out a few of the bones in his back. He knocked Dean’s booted foot with his own. “When you’ve finished loving yourself, how about leading us back to the car, Hiawatha? We need to get this stuff back to Ed. And then I might just thrash your ass at pool as your reward for being such a fishing freak.”

A thank-you, Winchester style...

“Like hell you will, Samantha.”

...gratefully acknowledged and accepted.

 

******


End file.
